(a) Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a liquid crystal display and a driving method thereof.
(b) Discussion of Related Art
A liquid crystal display is one of the most popular flat panel displays. The liquid crystal display includes two display panels, each of which has field generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode, and a liquid crystal layer between the two display panels. The liquid crystal display displays images by determining alignments of liquid crystal molecules in the liquid crystal layer and controlling polarization of incident light through an electric field that is induced at the liquid crystal layer by applying a voltage to the field generating electrodes.
The liquid crystal display includes switching elements connected to each of the pixel electrodes, and a plurality of signal lines, such as gate lines and data lines, for applying a voltage to the pixel electrodes by controlling the switching elements.
Among the liquid crystal displays, a vertically aligned mode liquid crystal display has been receiving attention because of a large contrast ratio and a wide reference viewing angle. In the vertically aligned mode liquid crystal display, liquid crystal molecules are aligned to have major axes perpendicular to a display panel when an electric field is not being applied. The reference viewing angle denotes a viewing angle with a contrast ratio of 1:10, or denotes a critical angle for luminance reversal between grays.
In the case of the vertically aligned mode liquid crystal display, a pixel is divided into two subpixels, and transmittance of each subpixel is controlled by applying different voltages to the two subpixels in order to cause lateral visibility to be close to frontal visibility.
To control voltages of the two subpixels, a storage capacitor is introduced. It is difficult to use this method, however, because the structure and driving method thereof are too complicated.